baseballgame played with a bat, a ball, and gloves between two teams of nine players each on a field with four white bases laid out in a diamond (i.e., a square oriented so that its diagonal line is vertical). Teams alternate positions as batters (offense) and fielders (defense), exchanging places when three members of the batting team are “put out.” As batters, players try to hit the ball out of the reach of the fielding team and make a complete circuit around the bases for a “run.” The team that scores the most runs in nine innings (times at bat) wins the game.

A national pastime

The United States is credited with developing several popular sports, including some (such as baseball, gridiron football, and basketball) that have large fan bases and, to varying degrees, have been adopted internationally. But baseball, despite the spread of the game throughout the globe and the growing influence of Asian and Latin American leagues and players, is the sport that Americans still recognize as their “national pastime.” The game has long been woven into the fabric of American life and identity. “It’s our game,” exclaimed the poet Walt Whitman more than a century ago, “that’s the chief fact in connection with it: America’s game.” He went on to explain that baseball

has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere—it belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life. It is the place where memory gathers.

Perhaps Whitman exaggerated baseball’s importance to and its congruency with life in the United States, but few would argue the contrary, that baseball has been merely a simple or an occasional diversion.

It was nationalistic sentiment that helped to make baseball “America’s game.” In the quest to obtain greater cultural autonomy, Americans yearned for a sport they could claim as exclusively their own. Just as the English had cricket and the Germans their turnvereins (gymnastic clubs), a sporting newspaper declared as early as 1857 that Americans should have a “game that could be termed a ‘Native American Sport.’ ” A powerful confirmation of baseball as the sport to fill that need came in 1907 when a special commission appointed by A.G. Spalding, a sporting goods magnate who had formerly been a star pitcher and an executive with a baseball team, reported that baseball owed absolutely nothing to England and the children’s game of rounders. Instead, the commission claimed that, to the best of its knowledge (a knowledge based on flimsy research and self-serving logic), baseball had been invented by Abner Doubleday at Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. This origin myth was perpetuated for decades.

In a country comprising a multiplicity of ethnic and religious groups, one without a monarchy, an aristocracy, or a long and mythic past, the experience of playing, watching, and talking about baseball games became one of the nation’s great common denominators. It provided, in the perceptive words of British novelist Virginia Woolf, “a centre, a meeting place for the divers activities of a people whom a vast continent isolates [and] whom no tradition controls.” No matter where one lived, the “hit-and-run,” the “double play,” and the “sacrifice bunt” were carried out the same way. The unifying power of baseball in the United States was evident in the Depression-ravaged 1930s, when a group of Cooperstown’s businessmen along with officials from the major leagues established the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The Hall of Fame became a quasi-religious shrine for many Americans, and, since its founding, millions of fans have made “pilgrimages” to Cooperstown, where they have observed the “relics”—old bats, balls, and uniforms—of bygone heroes.

Baseball also reshaped the nation’s calendar. With the rise of industrialization, the standardized clock time of the office or factory robbed people of the earlier experience of time in its rich associations with the daylight hours, the natural rhythms of the seasons, and the traditional church calendar. Yet, for Americans, the opening of the baseball training season signaled the arrival of spring, regular-season play meant summer, and the World Series marked the arrival of fall. In the winter, baseball fans participated in “hot stove leagues,” reminiscing about past games and greats and speculating about what the next season had to offer.

The World Series, inaugurated in 1903 and pitting the champions of the American and National Leagues in a postseason playoff, quickly took its place alongside the Fourth of July and Christmas as one of the most popular annual rites. The series was, said Everybody’s Magazine in 1911, “the very quintessence and consummation of the Most Perfect Thing in America.” Each fall it absorbed the entire nation.

Baseball terms and phrases, such as “He threw me a curve,” “Her presentation covered all the bases,” and “He’s really out in left field,” soon became part of the national vocabulary. So entrenched is baseball in the ordinary conversation of Americans that during the administration of President George Bush, a baseball player during his years at Yale University, the foreign press struggled to translate the president’s routine use of baseball metaphors. As early as the 1850s, baseball images began to appear in periodicals, and, in the 20th century, popular illustrator Norman Rockwell often used baseball as the subject for his The Saturday Evening Post covers. Casey at the Bat and Take Me Out to the Ballgame remain among the best-known poems and songs, respectively, among Americans. Novelists and filmmakers frequently have turned to baseball motifs. After the mid-20th century, at the very time baseball at the grassroots level had begun a perceptible descent, baseball fiction proliferated. American colleges and universities even began to offer courses on baseball literature, and baseball films likewise proliferated. In 1994 the Public Broadcasting System released Ken Burns’s nostalgic Baseball, arguably the most monumental historical television documentary ever made.

While baseball possessed enormous integrative powers, the game’s history also has been interwoven with and reflective of major social and cultural cleavages. Until the first decades of the 20th century, middle-class Evangelical Protestants viewed the sport with profound suspicion. They associated baseball, or at least the professional version of the game, with ne’er-do-wells, immigrants, the working class, drinking, gambling, and general rowdiness. Conversely, these very qualities provided a foothold for the upward ascent of ethnic groups from the nation’s ghettos. Usually encountering less discrimination in baseball (as well as in other venues of commercial entertainment) than they did in the more “respectable” occupations, in the 19th century Irish and German Americans were so conspicuous in professional baseball that some observers wondered if they had a special capacity for playing the game.

For a brief time in the 1880s, before racial segregation became the norm in the United States, black players competed with whites in professional baseball. After that period, however, blacks had to carve out a separate world of baseball. Dozens of black teams faced local semiprofessional teams while barnstorming throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Despite playing a high quality of baseball, the players frequently engaged in various forms of clowning that perpetuated prevailing stereotypes of blacks to appeal to spectators. From the 1920s until the ’50s, separate black professional leagues—the Negro leagues—existed as well, but in 1947 Jackie Robinson crossed the long-standing colour bar in major league baseball. Because baseball was the national game, its racial integration was of enormous symbolic importance in the United States; indeed, it preceded the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision ending racial segregation in the schools (in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka) and helped to usher in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Moreover, in the 1980s and ’90s a huge influx of Hispanics into professional baseball reflected the country’s changing ethnic composition.

Baseball likewise contributed to the shaping of American conceptions of gender roles. Although women were playing baseball as early as the 1860s, their involvement in the sport was confined for the most part to the role of spectator. To counter the game’s reputation for rowdiness, baseball promoters took pains to encourage women to attend. “The presence of an assemblage of ladies purifies the moral atmosphere of a baseball gathering,” reported the Baseball Chronicle, “repressing as it does, all the out-burst of intemperate language which the excitement of a contest so frequently induces.” When women played on barnstorming teams in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the press routinely referred to them as “Amazons,” “freaks,” or “frauds.” In 1943, during World War II, when it was feared that professional baseball might be forced to close down, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League made its debut. After having provided more than 600 women an opportunity to play baseball and to entertain several million fans, the league folded in 1954.

But, even if unable to heal conflicts arising from fundamental social divisions, baseball exhibited an extraordinary capacity for fostering ties. In the 1850s, young artisans and clerks, frequently displaced in the city and finding their way of life changing rapidly in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, conceived of themselves as members of what was known as the “base ball fraternity.” Like the volunteer fire departments and militia units of the day, they donned special uniforms, developed their own rituals, and, in playing baseball, shared powerful common experiences. Playing and watching baseball contests also strengthened occupational, ethnic, and racial identities. Butchers, typesetters, draymen, bricklayers, and even clergymen organized baseball clubs. So did Irish Americans, German Americans, and African Americans.

Professional baseball nourished and deepened urban identities. “If we are ahead of the big city [New York] in nothing else,” crowed the Brooklyn Eagle as early as 1862, “we can beat her in baseball.” Fans invested their emotions in their professional representative nines. “A deep gloom settled over the city,” reported a Chicago newspaper in 1875 after the local White Stockings had been defeated by the St. Louis (Missouri) Brown Stockings. “Friends refused to recognize friends, lovers became estranged, and business was suspended.” Even in the late 20th century, in an age more given to cynicism, the successes and failures of professional teams continued to evoke strong feelings among local residents. For example, during the 1990s, after having experienced urban decay and demoralization in the previous two decades, Cleveland experienced a great civic revival fueled in part by the success of the Indians baseball team.

The significance of specific baseball teams and individual players extended beyond the localities that they represented. The New York Yankees, who in the first half of the 20th century were the quintessential representatives of the big city, of the East, of urban America with its sophistication, and of ethnic and religious heterogeneity, became synonymous with supernal success, while the St. Louis Cardinals emerged as the quintessential champions of the Midwest, of small towns and the farms, of rural America with its simplicity, rusticity, and old-stock Protestant homogeneity. In the 1920s Babe Ruth became the diamond’s colossal demigod. To those toiling on assembly lines or sitting at their desks in corporate bureaucracies, Ruth embodied America’s continuing faith in upward social mobility. His mighty home runs furnished vivid proof that men remained masters of their own destinies and that they could still rise from mean, vulgar beginnings to fame and fortune. For African Americans, black stars such as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson furnished equally compelling models of individual inspiration and success.

Baseball parks became important local civic monuments and repositories of collective memories. The first parks had been jerry-built, flimsy wooden structures, but between 1909 and 1923 some 15 major league clubs constructed new, more permanent parks of steel and concrete. These edifices were akin to the great public buildings, skyscrapers, and railway terminals of the day; local residents proudly pointed to them as evidence of their city’s size and its achievements.

Seeing them as retreats from the noise, dirt, and squalor of the industrial city, the owners gave the first parks pastoral names—Ebbets Field, Sportsman’s Park, and the Polo Grounds—but, with the construction of symmetrical, multisports facilities in the 1960s and ’70s, urban and futuristic names such as Astrodome and Kingdome predominated. In a new park-building era in the 1990s, designers sought to recapture the ambience of earlier times by designing “retro parks,” a term that was something of an oxymoron in that, while the new parks offered the fan the intimacy of the old-time parks, they simultaneously provided modern conveniences such as escalators, climate-controlled lounges, high-tech audiovisual systems, Disneyesque play areas for children, and space for numerous retail outlets. The increasing corporate influence on the game was reflected in park names such as Network Associates Stadium and Bank One Ballpark.

After about the mid-20th century, baseball’s claim to being America’s game rested on more precarious foundations than in the past. The sport faced potent competition, not only from other professional sports (especially gridiron football) but even more from a massive conversion of Americans from public to private, at-home diversions. Attendance as a percentage of population fell at all levels of baseball, the minor leagues became a shell of their former selves, and hundreds of semipro and amateur teams folded. In the 1990s, player strikes, free agency, disparities in competition, and the rising cost of attending games added to the woes of major league baseball. Yet, baseball continued to exhibit a remarkable resiliency; attendance at professional games improved, and attendance at minor league games was close to World War II records by the end of the century. As the 21st century opened, baseball still faced serious problems, but the sport was gaining in popularity around the world, and a strong case could still be made for baseball holding a special place in the hearts and minds of the American people.

History

Origin

The term base-ball can be dated to 1744, in John Newbery’s children’s book A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. The book has a brief poem and an illustration depicting a game called base-ball. Interestingly, the bases in the illustration are marked by posts instead of the bags and flat home plate now so familiar in the game. The book was extremely popular in England and was reprinted in North America in 1762 (New York) and 1787 (Massachusetts).

Many other early references to bat-and-ball games involving bases are known: “playing at base” at the American army camp at Valley Forge in 1778; the forbidding of students to “play with balls and sticks” on the common of Princeton College in 1787; a note in the memoirs of Thurlow Weed, an upstate New York newspaper editor and politician, of a baseball club organized about 1825; a newspaper report that the Rochester (New York) Baseball Club had about 50 members at practice in the 1820s; and a reminiscence of the elder Oliver Wendell Holmes concerning his Harvard days in the late 1820s, stating that he played a good deal of ball at college.

The Boy’s Own Book (1828), a frequently reprinted book on English sports played by boys of the time, included in its second edition a chapter on the game of rounders. As described there, rounders had many resemblances to the modern game of baseball: it was played on a diamond-shaped infield with a base at each corner, the fourth being that at which the batter originally stood and to which he had to advance to score a run. When a batter hit a pitched ball through or over the infield, he could run. A ball hit elsewhere was foul, and he could not run. Three missed strikes at the ball meant the batter was out. A batted ball caught on the fly put the batter out. One notable difference from baseball was that, in rounders, when a ball hit on the ground was fielded, the fielder put the runner out by hitting him with the thrown ball; the same was true with a runner caught off base. Illustrations show flat stones used as bases and a second catcher behind the first, perhaps to catch foul balls. The descent of baseball from rounders seems indisputably clear-cut. The first American account of rounders was in The Book of Sports (1834) by Robin Carver, who credits The Boy’s Own Book as his source but calls the game base, or goal, ball.

Early years

In 1845, according to baseball legend, Alexander J. Cartwright, an amateur player in New York City, organized the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, which formulated a set of rules for baseball, many of which still remain. The rules were much like those for rounders, but with a significant change in that the runner was put out not by being hit with the thrown ball but by being tagged with it. This change no doubt led to the substitution of a harder ball, which made possible a larger-scale game.

The adoption of these rules by the Knickerbockers and other amateur club teams in the New York City area led to an increased popularity of the game. The old game with the soft ball continued to be popular in and around Boston; a Philadelphia club that had played the old game since 1833 did not adopt the Knickerbocker or New York version of the game until 1860. Until the American Civil War (1861–65), the two versions of the game were called the Massachusetts game (using the soft ball) and the New York game (using the hard ball). During the Civil War, soldiers from New York and New Jersey taught their game to others, and after the war the New York game became predominant.

In 1854 a revision of the rules prescribed the weight and size of the ball, along with the dimensions of the infield, specifications that have not been significantly altered since that time. The National Association of Base Ball Players was organized in 1857, comprising clubs from New York City and vicinity. In 1859 Washington, D.C., organized a club, and in the next year clubs were formed in Lowell, Massachusetts; Allegheny, Pennsylvania; and Hartford, Connecticut. The game continued to spread after the Civil War—to Maine, Kentucky, and Oregon. Baseball was on its way to becoming the national pastime. It was widely played outside the cities, but the big-city clubs were the dominant force. In 1865 a convention was called to confirm the rules and the amateur status of baseball and brought together 91 amateur teams from such cities as St. Louis; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Louisville, Kentucky; Washington, D.C.; Boston; and Philadelphia.

Professional baseball

Two important developments in the history of baseball occurred in the post-Civil War period: the spread of the sport to Latin America and Asia (discussed later) and the professionalization of the sport in the United States. The early baseball clubs such as the New York Knickerbockers were clubs in the true sense of the word: members paid dues, the emphasis was on fraternity and socializing, and baseball games were played largely among members. But the growth of baseball’s popularity soon attracted commercial interest. In 1862 William Cammeyer of Brooklyn constructed an enclosed baseball field with stands and charged admission to games. Following the Civil War, this practice quickly spread, and clubs soon learned that games with rival clubs and tournaments drew larger crowds and brought prestige to the winners. The interclub games attracted the interest and influence of gamblers. With a new emphasis on external competition, clubs felt pressure to field quality teams. Players began to specialize in playing a single position, and field time was given over to a club’s top players so they could practice. Professionalism began to appear about 1865–66 as some teams hired skilled players on a per game basis. Players either were paid for playing or were compensated with jobs that required little or no actual work. Amateurs resented these practices and the gambling and bribery that often accompanied them, but the larger public was enthralled by the intense competition and the rivalries that developed. The first publicly announced all-professional team, the Cincinnati (Ohio) Red Stockings, was organized in 1869; it toured that year, playing from New York City to San Francisco and winning some 56 games and tying 1. The team’s success, especially against the hallowed clubs of New York, resulted in national notoriety and proved the superior skill of professional players. The desire of many other cities and teams to win such acclaim guaranteed the professionalization of the game, though many players remained nominally in the amateur National Association of Base Ball Players until the amateurs withdrew in 1871. Thereafter professional teams largely controlled the development of the sport.

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was formed in 1871. The founding teams were the Philadelphia Athletics; the Chicago White Stockings (who would also play as the Chicago Colts and the Chicago Orphans before becoming the Cubs—the American League Chicago White Sox were not formed until 1900); the Brooklyn (New York) Eckfords; the Cleveland (Ohio) Forest Citys; the Forest Citys of Rockford, Illinois; the Haymakers of Troy, New York; the Kekiongas of Fort Wayne, Indiana; the Olympics of Washington, D.C.; and the Mutuals of New York City. The league disbanded in 1876 with the founding of the rival National League of Professional Baseball Clubs. The change from a players’ association to one of clubs was particularly significant. The teams making up the new league represented Philadelphia, Hartford (Connecticut), Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville (Kentucky), St. Louis, and New York City. When William Hulbert, president of the league (1877–82), expelled four players for dishonesty, the reputation of baseball as an institution was significantly enhanced.

League formation

In 1881 the American Association was formed with teams from cities that were not members of the National League and teams that had been expelled from the league (such as Cincinnati, which was disciplined in 1880 for playing games on Sunday and allowing liquor on the grounds). In 1890, after the National League tried to limit salaries (a $2,000 maximum for pitchers), the players formed the Players’ League, but it quickly failed. The American Association unsuccessfully challenged the National League and late in 1891 merged with it in a 12-team league that constituted a monopoly, an arrangement that prevailed through 1899. By 1900 the National League had shrunk to eight teams—Boston (the team that would eventually become the Braves), Brooklyn (soon to be the Dodgers), Chicago (soon to be the Cubs), Cincinnati (the Reds, who had returned to the league in 1890), New York City (the Giants), Philadelphia (the Phillies), Pittsburgh (the Pirates), and St. Louis (the Cardinals)—and it remained so constituted until 1953, when the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The Western League, organized in 1893, had Midwestern members. When in 1900 Charles Comiskey moved his St. Paul (Minnesota) team to Chicago as the White Sox and the Grand Rapids (Michigan) team was shifted to Cleveland as the Indians, the National League agreed to the moves. However, when permission was asked to put teams in Baltimore (Maryland) and Washington, D.C., the National League balked, and the “baseball war” was on. The Western League, renamed the American League and officially elevated to major league status in 1901, transferred teams from Indianapolis (Indiana), Kansas City (Missouri), Minneapolis, and Buffalo (New York) to Baltimore (the first of two American League teams to be called the Baltimore Orioles), Washington, D.C. (the Senators), Philadelphia (the Athletics), and Boston (the Red Stockings). American League teams also were established in Detroit, Michigan (the Tigers), and Milwaukee (the first of two teams to be named the Milwaukee Brewers), the latter club moving to St. Louis as the Browns in 1902. When the Baltimore club moved to New York City in 1903 to become the Highlanders (after 1912, the Yankees), the league took the form it was to keep until 1954, when the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles.

During the “war,” the American League wooed away many of the National League’s star players. In 1903 the leagues agreed to prohibit single ownership of two clubs in the same city and the shifting of franchises from one city to another by either league without permission of the other. They also established rules for transferring players from one league to the other and for moving minor league players into the major leagues. The peace of 1903 resulted in the first World Series, which, after a hiatus in 1904 (the New York Giants refused to play, believing the opposition unworthy), was held each year thereafter, the winner being the team to win four games out of seven (five out of nine from 1919 to 1921). In the period following the “war,” the two leagues enjoyed a long period of growth. The “inside game” dominated the next two decades. It , until hitter-friendly rules were instituted in 1920, ushering in the “live-ball era” (the period of inside-game dominance was also known as the “dead-ball era”). The inside game was a style of play that emphasized pitching, speed, and batsmanship. Bunting was very common, and doubles and triples were more heralded than home runs (which during this era were almost exclusively of the inside-the-park variety). Two managers were credited as the masters of the inside game and brought success to their respective teams: John J. McGraw, manager of the National League New York Giants (1902–32), and Connie Mack, manager of the American League Philadelphia Athletics (1901–50).

Survival and growth

Baseball suffered a major scandal—subsequently called the Black Sox scandal—when eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of accepting bribes from known gamblers to “throw” the 1919 World Series. Although Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox, suspended the players for the 1921 season, they were found not guilty because of insufficient evidence. Presuming a need to restore baseball’s honour, however, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned the eight accused players from baseball for life after he was named baseball’s first commissioner, supplanting the three-man National Commission that had been created in 1903.

During the 1920s, generally known as a golden age of sports in the United States, the premier hero was Babe Ruth. A New York Yankee outfielder affectionately known as the “Sultan of Swat,” Ruth was a large man with an even larger personality, and his reinvention of the home run (the sort that traveled over the outfield wall) into a mythic feat enthralled the nation. His performance not only assured the success of his team but spurred a tactical change in baseball. The inside game, with its bunts and sacrifices, gave way to the era of free swinging at the plate. The resulting explosion of offense brought fans to the ballparks in droves. Even the Great Depression of the 1930s did little to abate the rise in popularity and financial success of the game except at the minor league and Negro league levels. The commercial growth of the game was aided by several recent innovations. The first All-Star Game, an exhibition game pitting the best players in the National League against the best of the American League, was played at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1933. During the 1920s club owners also cautiously embraced radio broadcasting of games. The first major league game broadcast took place in Pittsburgh in 1921, but during that decade only the Chicago Cubs allowed broadcasts of all their games. Many owners feared radio would dissuade fans from attending the games in person, especially during the Great Depression. However, the opposite proved to be true; radio created new fans and brought more of them to the ballpark. Night baseball, which had already been used by barnstorming and minor league teams, began in the major leagues at Cincinnati in 1935. Initially caution and tradition slowed the interest in night baseball, but the obvious commercial benefits of playing when fans were not at work eventually won out. Delayed by World War II, night baseball became almost universal by the 1960s, with all teams but the Cubs scheduling about half of their home games at night. (The Cubs acceded to night baseball at home only in 1988.) The first nighttime World Series game was played in 1971.

From 1942 until the end of World War II, baseball operated under the “green light” order of Commissioner Landis, approved by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, Landis asked Roosevelt if he felt that baseball should “close down for the duration of the war.” Roosevelt, a lifelong baseball fan, replied in a letter dated January 15, 1942, that he felt baseball was valuable to the nation and should continue throughout the war. Once Landis received this letter giving baseball the go-ahead, organized baseball threw itself behind the American war effort, billing itself as “the national nerve tonic” for workers in wartime factories. Attendance at baseball games was still off slightly. Further, many players went into the armed services—most notably Ted Williams, the last man in organized baseball to have a season batting average of more than .400 (.406 in 1941)—and the quality of play suffered somewhat.

The postwar period

The years following the conclusion of World War II were marked by rising attendance, the growth of the minor leagues, and in 1947 the racial integration of the game (for more on the integration of baseball, see Blacks in baseball, below). This period also was marked by new efforts by players to obtain better pay and conditions of employment. A portent of things to come was the formation in 1946 of the American Baseball Guild. Although the guild failed in appeals to national and state labour relations boards, its very existence led to reforms before the 1947 season: a minimum major league salary of $5,000, no salary cuts during a season for a major league player moved to the minors, weekly spring-training expense money of $25, a 25 percent limit on annual salary cuts, and establishment of a players’ pension fund.

Landis’s successor as commissioner, Albert B. (“Happy”) Chandler (1945–51), assured the soundness of the pension fund in 1950 by signing a six-year contract for broadcasting World Series and All-Star games; the television portion alone amounted to $1 million a year, with a large proportion earmarked for the pension fund. Radio and television rights for regular-season games remained with each club. Later commissioners included Ford C. Frick (1951–65), William D. Eckert (1965–69), Bowie Kuhn (1969–84), Peter Ueberroth (1984–89), A. Bartlett Giamatti (1989), Fay Vincent (1989–92), and Allan H. (“Bud”) Selig.

Movement and expansion

The postwar boom was short-lived, however. America was going through tremendous changes. Millions were moving out of the cities and to the suburbs, and population centres in the South and West were growing. Americans had more time and money to enjoy themselves, which they did through vacationing and outdoor recreation. Moreover, the rapid growth of television preoccupied the country. Baseball was slow to adapt. Major league clubs were located only as far west as St. Louis and no farther south than Washington, D.C. Many of the ballparks had fallen into disrepair, were outdated, and were inconvenient for surburbanites driving in for a game. Despite exciting play on the field, attendance began to wane. The added revenue from radio and television broadcast rights could not offset the losses at the gate. The 1950s saw the first franchise changes since 1903. In 1953 the Braves, always overshadowed in New England by the Red Sox, moved from Boston to Milwaukee (in 1966 the franchise moved again, to Atlanta, Georgia), where they were offered a new stadium. The next year the St. Louis Browns, themselves overshadowed by the Cardinals, moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles. In 1955 the Philadelphia Athletics franchise was moved to Kansas City, Missouri (and in 1968 to Oakland, California). The impact of these moves was slight compared with the move of the Dodgers and Giants from New York City to California (the Dodgers to Los Angeles and the Giants to San Francisco) in 1958. Frustrated in his attempts to win city support for a new stadium, Dodger owner Walter O’Malley jumped at an offer to relocate the team to Los Angeles, which was then the third largest city in the country. O’Malley persuaded the Giants to move to San Francisco in order to maintain their rivalry and ease the travel burden on National League teams.

Despite the betrayal felt by fans in Brooklyn and Manhattan, the moves were a successful business decision for the clubs. The decade of franchise movement was followed by several rounds of expansion that lasted into the 1990s. Expansion began in 1961 when the Washington (D.C.) Senators were moved to Minneapolis–St. Paul and renamed the Twins, and a new franchise was granted to Washington (also named the Senators); however, it lasted only until 1971, when it was transferred to Dallas–Fort Worth and renamed the Texas Rangers. Another American League franchise was awarded to Los Angeles (later moved to Anaheim as the California Angels, now known as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim) in 1961, and in 1962 the National League also expanded to 10 teams with new franchises in New York City (the Mets) and Houston, Texas (the Colt .45s; after 1964, the Astros). The 154-game season had been expanded in the American League to 162 in 1961; the National League followed suit in 1962.

Along with this first round of expansion came an era of superb pitching that dominated the league for a generation. The earned run averages for pitchers during this era averaged 3.30, and the major league batting average fell as low as .238 in 1968. Several changes in the game were believed to account for the resurgence of pitching; the strike zone was expanded in 1963; managers explored more strategic uses of the relief pitchers; and new glove technology improved defensive play. At the same time, a new generation of large multipurpose stadiums came into use. These stadiums typically used artificial turf that was harder and faster than natural grass. As a result, new emphasis was placed on speed in the field and on the base paths. Fearing that the dominance of pitching was hurting fan interest in the game, the major league tried to improve hitting by lowering the mound and narrowing the strike zone in 1969. In hopes of further increasing offensive play, the American League introduced the designated hitter in 1973. The changes did increase offensive output, but pitching still dominated through much of the 1970s.

In 1969 new franchises were awarded to Montreal (the Expos, the first major league franchise outside the United States) and San Diego, California (the Padres), bringing the National League to 12 teams. In the American League in 1969, new franchises in Kansas City, Missouri (the Royals), and Seattle, Washington (the Pilots), brought that league to 12 teams, and both leagues were divided into Eastern and Western divisions.

Playoffs between division winners determined the league pennant winners, who then played in the World Series, which was extended into late October. California, which had had no major league baseball prior to 1958, had five teams by 1969. Of the new franchises, only Seattle failed outright and was moved to Milwaukee, where it became the Brewers (moved to the National League in a 1998 reorganization). A franchise was again granted to Seattle (the Mariners) and to Toronto (the Blue Jays), bringing the number of American League teams to 14 in 1977. In 1993 the National League also was brought to 14 with the addition of teams in Denver (the Colorado Rockies) and Miami (the Florida Marlins). In 1998 the Arizona Diamondbacks (located in Phoenix) joined the National League, and the Tampa Bay (Florida) Devil Rays (now known as the Tampa Bay Rays) began play in the American League.

In 1994 both leagues were reconfigured into East, Central, and West divisions. The playoff format was changed to include an additional round and a wild card (the team with the best record among the non-division-winning teams in each league).

An explosion of offense occurred in the mid-1980s and after. In particular, home runs increased dramatically, reaching record-breaking numbers from 1985 to 1987 and again in the late 1990s. The reasons for the change from dominant pitching to hitting were not entirely clear. Many claimed the ball had been engineered to fly farther; others claimed that continual expansion had diluted the quality of pitching. The improved off-season conditioning (that now often included weight lifting) made players stronger and quicker with their bats. The 1990s also saw another generation of new ballparks, many of which featured small dimensions that were more to the liking of power hitters.

During the later half of the 20th century, expansion was perceived by baseball executives as both a source of added revenue for clubs (large entry fees were charged to new franchises) as well as a means of generating new interest in the game. In 2001, however, concerns over economically underperforming clubs prompted owners to announce plans to contract eliminate two teams (widely believed to be the Minnesota Twins and the since-relocated Montreal Expos). The plan was put on hold after the player’s union pursued legal action to prevent the move. The collective bargaining agreement of 2002 allowed for contraction to be considered in 2007, and a 2002 Minnesota court order that forced the Twins to play out the lease at their home stadium effectively ended the talk of contraction for the foreseeable future.

The minor leagues

The minor leagues formed an association in 1901 to deal with the problems resulting from the lack of agreement on contract ownership, salaries, territoriality, and other issues. The current structure was created when the major leagues reached their agreement in 1903, and the minor leagues became a training ground for prospective major league players and a refuge for older players.

In 1919 Branch Rickey, then manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, devised what came to be known as the “farm system”; as the price of established players increased, the Cardinals began “growing” their own, signing hundreds of high-school boys. Other major league clubs followed suit, developing their own farm clubs that were tied into the minors. In 1949 the minor leagues were tremendously popular: 448 teams in the United States, Canada, Cuba, and Mexico played in 59 leagues with an aggregate attendance of some 39 million, about twice that of the 16 major league clubs. The minor leagues at that time were divided into six classifications, graded according to the level of playing skills: AAA (triple A), AA (double A), A (single A), B, C, and D.

Attendance eroded soon thereafter when the major leagues began broadcasting and televising their games into minor league attendance areas. By the early 1980s, after the American and National leagues had annexed 10 choice minor league territories, the number of minor league teams had been greatly reduced, and only 17 leagues remained. Attendance had dropped, and the minor league clubs generally looked to the major league parent clubs for heavy subsidization. The purpose of the minor leagues had evolved from mainly providing local entertainment to developing major league talent.

This situation improved in the early 1990s. As ticket prices for major league games escalated, attendance at less expensive minor league games rose apace. Further, development of new stadiums and renovation of existing facilities created more interest in minor league baseball. By 2001 attendance at minor league games had reached more than 38.8 million. The minors had 15 leagues with 176 teams falling into one of five classifications—AAA, AA, A (full season), A (short season), and Rookie. The minor league franchises successfully concentrated on drawing families to their parks with both games and promotional entertainment.

Labour issues

From the beginning of organized professional baseball, the owners had controlled the game, players, managers, and umpires. The players had begun to organize as early as 1885, when a group of New York Giants formed the National Brotherhood of Base Ball Players, a benevolent and protective association. Under the leadership of John Montgomery Ward, who had a law degree and was a player for the Giants, the Brotherhood grew rapidly as a secret organization. It went public in 1886 to challenge the adoption of a $2,000 salary ceiling by the National League. Rebuffed in attempts to negotiate with league owners, the Brotherhood in 1890 formed the short-lived Players League.

During the National League–American League war of 1900–03, the Protective Association of Professional Baseball Players got National League players to switch to the other league, but with the peace treaty the association died. In 1912 came the Baseball Players’ Fraternity, which included most professional players. It was organized after the suspension of Ty Cobb for punching a fan. Later a threatened strike was settled the day before it was to begin.

Rise of the players

After a 1953 Supreme Court decision reaffirmed a 1922 decision stating that baseball was not a business that was subject to antitrust rules, baseball felt assured that its legal and economic foundation was firm. This foundation is primarily based on the Reserve Rule, or Reserve Clause, an agreement among major league teams, dating from 1879, whereby the rights of each team to the services of its players are observed by other teams; i.e., a team could designate a certain number of players who were not to be offered jobs by other teams. The original number of 5 such players was increased to 11 in 1883 and ultimately included a whole team roster.

The recourse the court failed to provide was in substance achieved by the Major League Baseball Players Association—founded in 1953 but largely ineffectual until 1966, when it hired as executive director Marvin Miller, a former labour-union official who also had been active in government in labour-management relations. A skillful negotiator, he secured players’ rights and benefits contractually and established grievance procedures with recourse to impartial arbitration. In 1968 the minimum salary was doubled to $10,000, and first-class travel and meal allowances were established in 1970. A threatened players’ boycott of spring training was averted in 1969 by a compromise assuring a $20,000 median salary.

In 1970 a new suit was brought in federal court contesting the Reserve Clause. The suit was supported by the players’ association, which hired as counsel Arthur Goldberg, a former U.S. Supreme Court justice. The plaintiff was Curt Flood, star outfielder of the St. Louis Cardinals, and the defendants were the commissioner, the two major league presidents, and the major league clubs. Flood claimed that, in trading him to the Philadelphia Phillies without his knowledge or approval, the Cardinals had violated the antitrust laws. He refused to report to the Phillies and sat out the season. The court found against Flood, who appealed, and in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the 1922 and 1953 decisions exempting baseball from the antitrust laws, but it called on Congress to correct through legislation any inequities. Meanwhile, Flood had signed for the 1971 season with Washington on the understanding that he would not be sold or traded without his permission. He quit in midseason, however.

In 1972 baseball had its first general strike, lasting 13 days and causing the cancellation of 86 regular-season games and delaying the divisional playoffs and World Series by 10 days. The players asked for and ultimately got an addition to the pension fund. Another players’ strike was averted in 1973, when an agreement was reached that provided compulsory impartial arbitration of salary negotiations and established a rule that allowed a player with 10 years of service in the major leagues and the last 5 years with the same club to refuse to be traded without his consent.

These were unprecedented victories for the players, but their greatest triumph came prior to the 1976 season. Pitchers Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos played the entire 1975 season without signing a contract; their contracts had expired but were automatically renewed by their clubs. Miller had been waiting for such a test case. The players’ union filed a grievance on behalf of McNall and Messersmith, contending that a player’s contract could not be renewed in perpetuity, a custom first established in 1879. Arbitrator Peter Seitz found for the players. This decision substantively demolished the Reserve Rule.

Stunned, the owners appealed but without success. Negotiations followed, however, and the union agreed to a modification of the Reserve Rule: players with six or more years of major league service could become free agents when their contracts expired and would be eligible to make their own deals. The ruling allowed eligible players who refused to sign their 1976 contracts to choose free agency in 1977.

Twenty-four players took immediate advantage of this new opportunity and went on the open market. Frantic bidding by the clubs followed. Bill Campbell, a relief pitcher with the Minnesota Twins, was the first free agent to make a new connection. He signed a four-year, $1 million contract with the Boston Red Sox, which annually paid him more than 10 times his 1976 salary. The free agency procedure was the principal issue when the players struck for 50 days at the height of the 1981 season (June 12–July 31), forcing the cancellation of 714 games. Once again the players won. In the settlement it was agreed that clubs losing players to free agency would not receive direct compensation from the free agents’ new teams. The union contended that such compensation would impede movement, forcing the signing club, in effect, to pay twice: a huge sum to the player and further compensation to the player’s former employer. Under certain conditions relating to the quality of the player, however, the team that lost the free agent could draft a player from among those assigned to a compensation pool by their teams, and it could select an amateur draft choice from the signing team.

After another brief shutdown (August 6–7, 1985) centring on salary arbitration, the owners agreed to increase the minimum salary from $40,000 to $60,000, but the number of major league seasons a player had to serve before qualifying for arbitration was raised from two to three. Fan interest continued to rise, and major league attendance records were broken six times in the 1985–91 seasons. The major source of revenue, however, was television. The combined revenue from network television in 1984 was $90 million; one network purchased the rights to televise games in the 1990–93 seasons for $1.1 billion.

In 1994 the owners, unhappy with escalating payrolls and wary of declining television revenues and the growing financial gap between large- and small-market clubs, proposed a new collective bargaining agreement that included a salary cap (a limit on a team’s payroll), elimination of salary arbitration, and a revised free agency plan. The proposal was a dramatic shift from the previous contract and was promptly rejected by the players’ union. The negotiations that followed were inconclusive, and on August 12 the players went on strike, shutting down all major league play for the remainder of the season. When the owners unilaterally imposed the salary cap in December 1994, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) threatened legal action, and the cap was withdrawn. The owners again acted unilaterally in February 1995, eliminating salary arbitration, free agent bidding, and anticollusion provisions. Again the NLRB responded, seeking an injunction that would force ownership to operate under the old contract until a new agreement could be reached with the union. A U.S. district court granted the injunction on March 31, 1995, and the players’ union quickly announced that the strike was over. The owners accepted the players’ offer to return without a new agreement and to continue negotiations.

The 1994–95 strike lasted 234 days, erased 921 games (669 from the 1994 season, 252 from the 1995 season), forced the first cancellation of the World Series since 1904, disrupted the economies of cities and states, and disappointed millions of fans—all without reaching a resolution. As a result, there was an unprecedented decline in attendance during the 1995 season.

Attendance improved by 2000, but player compensation had soared; the average salary paid to a player had risen dramatically. (But while the average player salary increased sharply, the median player salary had not, meaning that the salaries paid to superstars of the game increased at a much greater rate than those of ordinary players. The average salary was about $41,000 in 1974, $289,000 in 1983, nearly $590,000 in 1990, and nearly $2,000,000 in 2000, and more than $3,300,000 in 2010. Median salaries were not compiled in the 1970s, but the 1983 median salary was $207,000, in 1990 it was $350,000, and in 2000 it was $700,000, and in 2010 it was more than $1,100,000.)

Blacks in baseball

Segregation

During baseball’s infancy, a colour barrier was put up by the first formal organization of baseball clubs, the National Association of Base Ball Players, which decreed in 1867 that clubs "which may be composed of one or more coloured persons" should not be permitted to compete with its teams of gentlemen amateurs. When the first professional league was formed four years later, it had no written rule barring black players, but it was tacitly understood that they were not welcome.

The colour line was not consistently enforced, though, during the early years of professionalism. At least 60 black players performed in the minor leagues during the late 19th century—mostly in all-black clubs. In 1884 two African Americans played in a recognized major league, the American Association. They were Moses Fleetwood (“Fleet”) Walker, a catcher for the Association’s Toledo team, and his brother Welday, an outfielder who appeared in six games for Toledo.

The number of black players in professional leagues peaked in 1887 when Fleet Walker, second baseman Bud Fowler, pitcher George Stovey, pitcher Robert Higgins, and Frank Grant, a second baseman who was probably the best black player of the 19th century, were on rosters of clubs in the International League, one rung below the majors. At least 15 other black players were in lesser professional leagues. Although they suffered harassment and discrimination off the field, they were grudgingly accepted by most of their teammates and opponents.

A League of Colored Base Ball Clubs, organized in 1887 in cities of the Northeast and border states, was recognized as a legitimate minor league under organized baseball’s National Agreement and raised hopes of sending black players to big league teams. The league’s first games, however, attracted small crowds, and it collapsed after only one week. While no rule in organized baseball ever stated that black players were banned, a so-called “gentlemen’s agreement” to exclude blacks eventually prevailed.

There were other disturbing signs of exclusion for black players in 1887. The Syracuse (New York) Stars of the International League suffered a mutiny when pitcher Douglas (“Dug”) Crothers refused to sit for a team portrait with his black teammate Robert Higgins. In Newark, New Jersey, black pitcher Stovey was kept out of an exhibition game with the major league Chicago White Stockings at the insistence of Cap Anson, Chicago’s manager and one of the most famous players of baseball’s early days. And the St. Louis Browns, American Association champions, refused to play an exhibition game against the all-black Cuban Giants. The night before the scheduled game, eight members of the Browns handed a message to the team’s owner that read: "[We] do not agree to play against Negroes tomorrow. We will cheerfully play against white people at any time."

In midseason that year the International League’s board of directors told its secretary to approve no more contracts for black players, although it did not oust the league’s five blacks. The Ohio State League also wrestled inconclusively with the colour question. It was becoming clear that the colour bar was gradually being raised. Black players were in the minor leagues for the next few years, but their numbers declined steadily. The last black players in the recognized minor leagues during 19th century were the Acme Colored Giants, who represented Celoron, New York, in the Iron and Oil Leagues in 1898.

As the 20th century dawned, separation of the races was becoming the rule, especially in the South. The U.S. Supreme Court had written segregation into national law in 1895 in Plessy v. Ferguson, which approved separate schools for black and white children. In the South, state laws and local ordinances placed limits on the use of public facilities by African Americans and forbade athletic competition between blacks and whites. In the North, African Americans were not usually segregated by law, but local custom dictated second-class citizenship for them.

Nevertheless, the idea of black players in the major and minor leagues was not yet unthinkable. In 1901 John J. McGraw, manager of the Baltimore Orioles in the new American League, tried to sign a black second baseman named Charlie Grant by saying that he was a Native American named Tokohama, a member of the Cherokee tribe. The effort failed when rivals correctly identified Grant instead as a member of the Chicago Columbia Giants, a black team. Five years later there was an aborted attempt to bring African American William Clarence Matthews, Harvard University’s shortstop from 1902 to 1905, into the National League.

Increasingly, black players who wanted to play professionally had to join all-black teams. (Several swarthy players in the big leagues were widely assumed to be black, although they claimed to be white Latin Americans. No admitted black men played in the white leagues at the time.) Ninety percent of the country’s African American citizens lived in the South, but migration to Northern states was increasing. With the growing base of potential fans in the North, top-quality black teams appeared in the Northeast and Midwest. Among them were the Genuine Cuban Giants and Cuban X Giants of New York City (both made up of African Americans despite their names), the Cuban Stars and Havana Stars (both with real Cubans), the Lincoln Giants of New York City, the Philadelphia Giants, the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City (New Jersey), the Homestead (Pennsylvania) Grays, the Hilldale Club of Philadelphia, and the Norfolk (Virginia) Red Stockings. In the Midwest the leaders were the Chicago American Giants, the Columbia Giants, Leland Giants, and Union Giants of Chicago, the Kansas City (Missouri) Monarchs, and the Indianapolis ABCs. Especially noteworthy was the All Nations team, composed of African Americans, whites, a Japanese, a Hawaiian, an American Indian, and several Latin Americans. On its roster at various times before World War I were two of the greatest black pitchers, John Donaldson and Jose Mendez.

These teams vied for the mythical "colored championship of the world" and also played white semipro and college teams. Salaries were modest. Journeymen players earned $40 to $75 a month, while a star might command more than $100. Some Chicago teams played in the city’s semipro league on weekends, occasionally competing against big leaguers from the Cubs and White Sox who played under assumed names. During the week they played white clubs in nearby towns.

Major league teams often played black teams during spring training trips to Cuba and sometimes had postseason games against black clubs in the United States. In 1909, for example, the Chicago Cubs won three close games in a series with the Leland Giants. In 1915, eastern black teams won four of eight games against big league teams, including a five-hit shutout of the National League champion Philadelphia Phillies by Smokey Joe Williams of the Lincoln Giants. In the late 1920s Commissioner Landis forbade big league clubs from competing in toto in the off-season. Partisans of black baseball believed it was because black teams often beat the major leaguers.

In the Midwest a few teams barnstormed all season long. The Kansas City (Kansas) Giants, for example, were on the road all summer, traveling mostly by railroad. Their opponents were white semipro teams throughout the Midwestern states and southern Canada. Although a black face was a novelty in the small towns, the players remembered that by and large they had little trouble finding food and lodging in the rural areas.

Formed in 1920 and 1921, respectively, the Negro National League and the Negro Eastern League played in New York City, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City (Missouri), Detroit, and other cities that had absorbed a large influx of African Americans from the South during and after World War I. In the 1920s a Negro World Series was begun and was held annually until the Negro leagues failed in the 1930s. A second Negro National League was founded late in that decade, and the Negro American League, formed in 1936, ultimately had Eastern and Western divisions that in 1952 played a Negro East-West game. Among the most famous players in the various Negro leagues were Josh Gibson (who was credited with hitting 89 home runs in one season), Satchel Paige, Bill Yancey, John Henry Lloyd, Andrew (“Rube”) Foster, and James Thomas (“Cool Papa”) Bell. After World War II, attendance at Negro league games declined as outstanding players were lost to formerly all-white teams. (For more in-depth information on this topic, see Negro leagues.)

Integration

Several major league teams either discussed or attempted the racial integration of professional baseball in the 1940s. The interest in integration in the 1940s was sparked by several factors—the increasing economic and political influence of urban blacks, the success of black ballplayers in exhibition games with major leaguers, and especially the participation of African Americans in World War II. The hypocrisy of fighting fascism abroad while tolerating segregation at home was difficult to ignore. During the war, protest signs outside Yankee Stadium read, “If we are able to stop bullets, why not balls?” A major obstacle to integration was removed in 1944 with the death of Commissioner Landis. Though he had made several public declarations that there was no colour barrier in baseball, during his tenure Landis prevented any attempts at signing black players. (He blocked, for example, Bill Veeck’s purchase of the Philadelphia Phillies in 1943 after learning that Veeck planned to stock his team with Negro league All-Stars.) On the other hand, Landis’s successor, Happy Chandler, was openly supportive of bringing integration to the sport.

In 1947 Jackie Robinson became the first black player in the modern major leagues. His arrival was the result of careful planning by Brooklyn Dodgers President Branch Rickey, who began researching the idea of signing a black player and scouting for the right individual when he joined the Dodgers in 1942. In a meeting with Robinson in 1945, Rickey badgered the player for several hours about the abuse and hostility he would receive from players and fans and warned him that he must not retaliate. Robinson agreed and spent the 1946 season with the Dodgers minor league franchise in Montreal in preparation for playing in the big leagues. His first season with Brooklyn was marred by all the hostility that Rickey had predicted (even from a handful of teammates), but it also was marked by Robinson’s determined play, which eventually won over fans and opponents, as well as helping the Dodgers win the National League pennant and earning him the Rookie of the Year award. Robinson, who was named Most Valuable Player in the National League after his third year, was followed into the major leagues immediately by Larry Doby and in 1948 by Paige. Both played for the American League Cleveland Indians, who won the World Series in 1948. Despite the successes of Robinson, Doby, and Paige, full integration of the major leagues came about slowly and was not completed until 1959 when Elijah Green joined the Boston Red Sox.

The impact of black players on the field was significant. They brought over from the Negro leagues an aggressive style of play that combined power hitting with daring on the base paths. Black players soon established themselves as major league stars. In the 1950s and ’60s players such as outfielders Willie Mays and Hank Aaron (who set the all-time career home-run record) and pitcher Bob Gibson posted statistics that ranked them among the best ever to play the game. Later Reggie Jackson, Ozzie Smith, and Barry Bonds were definitive players of their respective eras. In 1962 Robinson became the first black player inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame. In the 1970s, membership in the Hall was opened to the bygone stars of the Negro leagues.

By that time acceptance of black players was commonplace. However, inclusion of minorities in coaching and administrative positions was virtually nonexistent. In 1961 Gene Baker became the first African American to manage a minor league team, and in the mid-1960s there were only two African American coaches in the major leagues. In 1975 the Cleveland Indians made Frank Robinson the first black field manager in major league history. However, opportunities for minorities in managerial positions were rare, and their representation in leadership positions remains an issue.

Women in baseball

Women have played organized baseball since the 1860s. Students at the all-female Vassar College formed baseball teams as early as 1866. In 1875 three men organized a women’s baseball club in Springfield, Illinois, divided it into two teams, the Blondes and the Brunettes, and charged admission to see them play. In the early 20th century, barnstorming teams known as “Bloomer Girls” were formed in various parts of the United States and took on amateur and semiprofessional teams that included both men and women.

In its early stages, women’s involvement in professional baseball was largely an attempt to profit from the novelty of female players. An Ohio woman, Alta Weiss, pitched for the otherwise all-male semiprofessional Vermilion Independents in 1907. Jackie Mitchell became the first female professional baseball player when she signed a contract with the minor league Chattanooga Lookouts in 1931. Mitchell pitched in an exhibition game against the New York Yankees and struck out their two star players, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Organized baseball formally banned women from signing professional contracts with men’s teams in 1952, and the prohibition is still in effect.

When World War II made the suspension of major league baseball a possibility, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) was founded with four teams—the Rockford (Illinois) Peaches, the Racine Belles and the Kenosha Comets (both of Wisconsin), and the South Bend (Indiana) Blue Sox. The AAGPBL drew large crowds because of its players’ athletic abilities. The league management, however, was concerned that the players appear feminine to the fans, and rules encouraging the wearing of lipstick and long hair and banning the wearing of trousers off the field were promulgated. On the field, the women initially played fast-pitch softball (which features a larger ball and underhand pitching), but by 1948 overhand pitching was introduced, and eventually the only difference of note between men’s baseball and AAGPBL baseball was the size of the diamond, which in the AAGPBL had a shorter distance between bases. During its 11-year existence (1943–54), the league received a great deal of national attention, but by the 1950s the televising of major league baseball led to dwindling interest in the women’s teams, and the league folded. These female players were eventually recognized with an exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 1988. In 1992 the feature film A League of Their Own dramatized the story of the AAGPBL.

Beginning in 1994, the Colorado Silver Bullets, sponsored by a brewing company and managed by Hall of Fame pitcher Phil Niekro, competed against men’s teams for four years. Between 1997 and 2000 Ila Borders, a left-handed pitcher, played for two men’s teams in the independent Northern League. While women have participated in professional baseball for more than a century, their impact on the game has been limited.

Amateur baseball

After the divorce of amateur baseball in the United States from its professional counterpart in 1871, the amateur game continued to thrive on vacant lots in towns and cities and on pastures in the countryside. Becoming popular internationally, amateur baseball traveled to Latin America and Asia. Further, play by U.S. military teams helped make baseball a minor sport in The Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, England, Spain, Australia, and Tunisia. Amateur teams worldwide are represented by the International Baseball Federation (IBAF), which was formed by American Leslie Mann in 1938. The organization, headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, has hosted a Baseball World Cup since 1938.

As would be expected, baseball is one of the more important amateur sports in the United States. The first national amateur baseball program was the American Legion Junior League, founded in 1926 and later called the American Legion Baseball League, with an upper age limit of 19 years for players. The American Amateur Baseball Congress (founded 1935) conducts programs for youths age 8 to 19 and adults in seven divisions. By the late 1990s Little League (founded 1939), originally for boys 8 to 12 years old, had about 2,500,000 players in its baseball program and 400,000 in its softball program in 102 countries. Little League has added leagues for children as young as age 5 (Tee Ball, in which the ball is batted from a stationary pedestal) and for youths as old as age 18 (Big League). In 1974 girls were admitted into Little League play; boys and girls play together in the baseball program, but the softball program is divided by gender. Other programs for young players include the Babe Ruth League (1952) and PONY (Protect Our Nation’s Youth) Baseball, Inc. (1951).

American collegiate baseball is governed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). By 2000 more than 850 colleges fielded baseball teams under the NCAA. From 1947 the organization has conducted the College World Series, held since 1950 in Omaha, Nebraska.

Perhaps the pinnacle of amateur baseball is the Olympics. Baseball was played at the 1904 Olympic Games and had either exhibition or demonstration status at a number of Games after that, but it was designated a full medal sport beginning with the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain. Professional players became eligible to participate in Olympic baseball at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Baseball abroad

Baseball in Latin America

Baseball was first played in the United States in the 1840s but soon after became an international sport. The game was introduced in Cuba in 1864 when students returned home from the United States with a bat and ball. Baseball took hold and in fact became part of the Cuban identity in the independence struggle against Spain in the last quarter of the 19th century. Cubans helped spread the game throughout the Caribbean region. Two Cuban brothers brought baseball to the Dominican Republic in the 1880s, and Cubans, along with local nationals who had studied in the United States, introduced baseball to Venezuela in 1895 and to Puerto Rico in 1897.

Cuban refugees from the independence struggle, along with railroad workers and U.S. merchant marines, introduced baseball to various regions of Mexico between 1877 and the 1890s. Today baseball remains the most important sport in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela and is among the most popular sports in Puerto Rico. Football (soccer) remains the dominant sport in Mexico but is challenged by baseball in certain regions of the country; baseball is also an important sport in Central America. In the final decades of the 20th century, players from Latin American countries and Puerto Rico became an increasingly dominant force in major league baseball in the United States. See also Sidebar: Latin Americans in Major League Baseball.

Professional leagues currently exist in the Dominican Republic , Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. Games are played between October and January, with the winners of the four leagues meeting in the Caribbean Series each February. In Mexico there is also a summer league affiliated with Minor League Baseball (the governing body of minor league baseball in the United States) that has been given Triple A status. In both the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, summer rookie leagues are affiliated with Minor League Baseball.

Professional baseball leagues existed in Cuba (see also Cuban League) from 1878 until 1961, when the Cuban government abolished the professional game. With all the Cuban talent now at the amateur level, the Cubans began to dominate international amateur competition, winning the first gold medals given in baseball at the Olympic Games in Barcelona (1992) and Atlanta (1996).

Baseball in Asia and the Pacific

Baseball was introduced in Japan in the 1870s. It quickly gained popularity and by the end of the century had become a national sport. Today the annual Koshien tournament in Ōsaka, featuring the country’s top high-school teams, is nationally televised and can draw more than 50,000 fans.

A professional league was organized in 1936, and the two current leagues, the Central and the Pacific, began to operate in 1950 (see also Japanese baseball leagues). The champions of the two leagues meet each October in the Japan Series, the equivalent of the World Series in the United States. The most famous Japanese professional player is Oh Sadaharu, who hit 868 home runs while playing for the Yomiuri Giants between 1959 and 1980. (Hank Aaron, the leading home-run hitter in U.S. major league baseball, had a career total of 755.)

While the Japanese leagues have long imported players from the United States, only recently have Japanese players begun to play in the major leagues in the United States. In 1995 pitcher Hideo Nomo became the first Japanese citizen to join a U.S. major league team, after pitching professionally in the Japanese major leagues. Nomo won National League Rookie of the Year honours for his performance with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995, became a hero in Japan, and drew the attention of the American public to the quality of Japanese baseball. Ichiro Suzuki, as an outfielder with the Seattle Mariners at the turn of the 21st century, was another player who impressed American baseball fans.

Baseball is also an important sport in Korea, where there is a professional league, the Korea Baseball Organization, that has fielded an eight-team circuit since 1982. Taiwan, which has produced several Little League world champion teams, has two professional leagues, the Chinese Professional Baseball League, a four-team league that started in 1990, and the Taiwan Major League, a four-team league that began operations in 1997. Australia has an eight-team professional league, the International Baseball Association Australia, which started in 1989.

European baseball

Although professional sports in Europe are dominated by football (soccer), Italy has a 9-team professional baseball league and The Netherlands a 10-team circuit. Both Italy and The Netherlands qualified to compete in baseball at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

International competition

Baseball debuted as an Olympic sport at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Spain, and in the late 1990s the International Baseball Federation permitted professionals to play in international competitions. But because the Olympic Summer Games take place during the Major League Baseball season, the Olympic tournament failed to attract the top players in the sport. In 2005 the International Olympic Committee voted to drop the sport from the Summer program following the 2008 Olympics. That same year the International Baseball Federation sanctioned the World Baseball Classic, an a triennial international competition between national teams consisting of professional and amateur players. The inaugural World Baseball Classic was held in March 2006. It featured 16 teams from all parts of the globe and was won by Japan.The second World Baseball Classic was scheduled for 2009.

Analyzing baseball

To a degree unequaled by any other American team sport, baseball is a game of records and statistics. No other sport provides fans with so much numerical depth and breadth. Apart from the box score (introduced in 1845) that newspapers publish to provide statistical summaries of specific games, in the 1870s annual guides began furnishing year-end tabulations of batting, fielding, and pitching exploits. Hefty encyclopaedias of baseball contain detailed records of the performances of thousands of players and team seasons, and a vast array of special statistics are offered on the Internet.

The scorecard

The statistical record of a baseball game begins with the scorecard filled out by an official scorer, an employee of Major League Baseball who sits in the press box during a game and keeps track of the game’s activities. The official scorer rules on each play, deciding, for example, whether a pitch that gets away from the catcher is a wild pitch (a pitch so off target that the catcher had no chance to catch it) or a passed ball (a pitch that should have been handled by the catcher). Members of the media and fans often choose to keep score of the game also. Official scorers and media professionals use detailed forms to record every pitch. Fans, who typically buy a simple scorecard at the game, record the action in a much simpler fashion. The method of keeping official score is described in detail in the game’s rulebook, but for amateurs keeping score can be an idiosyncratic practice.

A basic scorecard, such as those sold at baseball parks, includes two charts, one for each team. A chart consists of the innings, marked along the top of the scorecard, and the batting order along the vertical axis. In between are boxes representing the potential at bats of each player in the lineup. Underneath each chart there is a small box used to record pitching statistics. All defensive players are assigned a number for score keeping; the methods of keeping score vary from fan to fan, but the numbers assigned to each position are the same everywhere. The pitcher is 1; the catcher is 2; first, second, and third basemen are numbered 3, 4, and 5, respectively; the shortstop is 6; and the left, centre, and right fielders are numbered 7, 8, and 9, respectively. With these numbers, plays such as a groundball to the shortstop who fields the ball and throws to first base for an out would be recorded as 6-3. There are also abbreviations, such as SB for stolen base and E for error, that are found on almost every scorecard. Software programs that allow fans to keep score on smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are now available.

The information in a scorecard is easily translated into a box score, which serves as a statistical summary of a game and is a staple of baseball news reporting.

Records and statistics

Baseball records have long provided benchmarks of individual achievements. No individual accomplishment possesses more drama for fans than the tally of home runs. Babe Ruth’s single-season record for home runs (60 in 1927) stood for 33 seasons until it was broken by Roger Maris (with 61 home runs in 1961). (It should be noted that, although Josh Gibson is credited with hitting 89 home runs in one season, Negro league records, which were sketchily kept, are not included in Major League Baseball statistics.) In 1998 both Mark McGwire (with 70) and Sammy Sosa (with 66) easily crashed through the 60-home-run barrier established by Ruth and Maris. In 2001 Barry Bonds broke McGwire’s record with 73 home runs for the season. The record for home runs over a player’s career is 762, set by Bonds, who eclipsed the mark of 755 set by Hank Aaron (though, again, it is believed that Gibson hit more). Ruth had long held that record as well, with a career home-run total of 714, until Aaron passed him in 1974.

For several decades, many of the records established by Ty Cobb, who played from 1905 through 1928, remained unbroken. While no one has successfully challenged Cobb’s lifetime batting average of .367 or his 12 batting championships, Pete Rose toppled Cobb’s lifetime mark of 4,189 hits in 1985 and finished his career with 4,256 hits. Cobb’s single-season (20th-century) stolen-base record of 96, set in 1915, fell to Maury Wills (with 104 in 1962), then Lou Brock (with 118 in 1974), and finally Rickey Henderson (with 130 in 1982). Henderson also holds the record for career steals with 1,406. While Joe DiMaggio’s consecutive hitting streak of 56 games in 1941 remained intact through the 20th century, on September 6, 1995, Cal Ripken, Jr., broke Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games played. Ripken finished his streak in 1998 with 2,632 games.

Late in the 20th century, pitching records came under assault as well. While Cy Young outpaced his modern counterparts in career wins with 511, pitchers since the mid-20th century have far surpassed earlier hurlers in career strikeouts, led by Nolan Ryan, who retired in 1993 with 5,714. No one, however, has equaled the record of Grover Cleveland Alexander, who is the only four-time winner of the Triple Crown of pitching (that is, leading the league in wins, strikeouts, and the lowest earned run average, or ERA). Alexander won the Triple Crown in 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1920.

In addition to individual marks, baseball fans carefully monitor record-shattering team performances. Great dynasties, teams that dominated play from year to year, have characterized much of major league baseball history. Beneficiaries of larger potential revenues because of their location, most of the dynasties have been from the country’s largest metropolitan areas. Hence, New York teams appeared in 52 of 103 World Series (through the year 2007). In particular, since 1921 the New York Yankees have towered over baseball: through the 2007 season the Yankees captured 39 American League pennants, and from 1996 through 2000 they had a 46–15 postseason (divisional playoffs and World Series) record, more postseason wins than all their competitors combined.

By measuring the changes in the delicate balance between offense and defense, statistics also reveal much of baseball’s history on the playing field. Lengthening the pitching distance to 60 feet 6 inches (18.4 metres) in 1893 initially touched off an offensive barrage. But increasing the size of the plate in 1900, counting the first two foul balls as strikes (adopted by the National League in 1901 and American League in 1903), the increased use of the spitball (in which moisture is applied to the surface of a ball to affect its flight), the appearance of a cadre of bigger and stronger pitchers, and conservative managerial styles (called “scientific” or “inside” baseball) all contributed to a sharp fall in total runs and hits. The hitting drought continued until the 1920s; then the outlawing of the spitball, the use of more balls per game, and the free swinging of Ruth produced a new offensive onslaught. Some also attributed this explosion of hitting to the introduction of what they believed to be a livelier ball, despite denials from major league authorities and the balls’ manufacturers. Offense continued to dominate the game until 1963, when baseball officials sought to speed up games by increasing the size of the strike zone called by the umpires. Lowering the pitching mound and reducing the size of the strike zone in 1969, along with the advent of the designated hitter rule (replacing the pitcher in the batting order with a better-hitting player) in the American League in 1973, all served to partially reverse the decline in offensive productivity.

The 1990s witnessed a new hitting revolution, with a proliferation of home runs at its centre. Even in Ruth’s heyday, homers were something of a rarity, coming at a rate of only 1 for each 91 at bats. Indeed, before 1994 a player hit 50 or more home runs in a season just 18 times; from 1995 to 2002 there were 15 50-homer seasons. By 1999 the sluggers were averaging 1 homer for each 30 at bats. In 1998 not only did McGwire and Sosa completely alter the game’s historic frame of reference for home runs in a single season, but in the very next season they again hit more than 60 homers (65 by McGwire; 63 by Sosa). Just two years later the record was shattered by Bonds.

Initially it was believed that this outburst of power was the result of lighter bats, a new style of hitting, an arguably more resilient ball, and weakened pitching in the wake of the expansion of the number of teams in the league. The slugging explosion was also attributed to the increased muscularity of hitters, though the matter of how hitters had gone about becoming stronger became increasingly controversial. In the mid-1990s, rumours circulated of the spreading use of steroids, which increase muscle mass (see sports: Human performance and the use of drugs). In 1991 it had become illegal to possess or sell anabolic steroids in the United States without a valid prescription; however, the major leagues had no formal policy on steroid use until 2002, when Ken Caminiti admitted to having used steroids while winning the 1996 Most Valuable Player award.

In 2003 it was alleged that a number of players, including Bonds, had obtained an illegal steroidal cream from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO). Bonds testified before a grand jury that he had never knowingly taken steroids, but accusations of steroid use dogged his pursuit of Aaron’s career home run record, and in 2007 he was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice regarding his testimony. Bonds, however, was far from the only player whose accomplishments were called into question by the issue of performance-enhancing drugs. In March 2005 the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform conducted hearings on steroid use in baseball. Among the players to testify were McGwire, Sosa, Frank Thomas, and Rafael Palmeiro (who testified, “I have never used steroids. Period”—though he later received a 10-day suspension for steroid use under the major leagues’ new zero-tolerance policy). In March 2006, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig named former U.S. senator George J. Mitchell to head up an independent inquiry into steroid use in baseball. Mitchell’s report was released in December 2007, and it mentioned 86 current and former players—including such stars as Bonds, Roger Clemens, Miguel Tejada, and Andy Pettitte—who were alleged to have possessed or used either steroids or human growth hormone (HGH) in the previous decade. Mitchell noted that everyone in baseball—players and management alike—shared responsibility for the “steroids era” and the effect it had on baseball’s reputation with the public. In the aftermath of these developments, baseball records and statistics since the 1990s have become the topic of much debate.

Awards

The issuing of annual and career awards is a very serious undertaking in baseball and is done with as much fan scrutiny as any statistical analysis of the sport. Major League Baseball presents several special achievement awards each season. The Most Valuable Player (MVP) is selected in both the American League and the National League. The MVP was first given in 1922; since 1931 the players have been chosen by the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA). There are also MVP awards for the League Championship Series, the World Series, and the All-Star Game.

For the All-Star Game, which is played annually during baseball’s midseason, the starting players from each league are selected by fan ballots. The remaining members of the squad are picked by the two All-Star managers, who are named because their teams appeared in the previous World Series.

The Cy Young Award honours the best pitcher in the National and American leagues. It was first awarded in 1956 to the outstanding pitcher in baseball, but in 1966 the baseball commissioner decided that each league would have its own Cy Young Award. Winners are selected by a vote of the BBWAA.

Begun in 1947, the Rookie of the Year award is given to the best new player in each league. A rookie is defined as a player who meets at least one of the following three criteria: fewer than 130 at bats, fewer than 50 innings pitched, or fewer than 45 days on a major league roster in the previous season. The BBWAA also select these winners.

The Gold Glove is awarded to the best defensive player at each of the nine positions (three outfielders are selected, but no consideration is given as to whether those players covered right, centre, or left field) in both the American League and the National League. The awards were first given in 1957. Players are selected by the managers and coaches of the major league teams, who are not permitted to vote for players from their own team.

The highest honour for a major league baseball player is induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, New York. The first selections were made in 1936 (the Hall actually opened in 1939), and inductees to the hall now include players, Negro league players, managers, baseball executives, and umpires.

Fantasy baseball

The term fantasy baseball was introduced to describe the Internet-based virtual baseball game. But it also can be loosely construed to mean a number of games that permit the fan to play either a virtual game or a virtual season of baseball. In all these fantasy games, the fans pose as both general manager and field manager of their team, building a roster through a draft and trades and making lineups in pursuit of the greatest statistical production. Game players use the batting averages, home runs, and other statistics posted by actual baseball players to determine the outcome of the fantasy games.

One of the earlier precursors of Internet-based fantasy baseball was a board game, introduced in 1951 by entrepreneur Dick Seitz, known as APBA (American Professional Baseball Association). A similar game called Strat-o-matic first appeared in the 1960s. Having purchased the APBA or Strat-o-matic board game, players annually ordered cards that listed the statistical data for the ballplayers from the prior season. A combination of data given on these cards and the rolling of dice determined the outcome of the player’s “at-bat” or turn. In the 1990s computerized versions of these games permitted the statistics for a season from any baseball league in the world to be programmed in, as well as those from past major league seasons. The cult status that APBA and Strat-o-matic garnered carried over to rotisserie baseball.

Rotisserie baseball was invented in 1980 by author Dan Okrent and a group of baseball-minded friends who regularly met at the Manhattan restaurant Le Rotisserie Francais. They formed the core of the first rotisserie league. Unlike APBA, which is based upon a prior season’s performance, rotisserie baseball and its later Internet-based fantasy variants are played during the course of the regular baseball season. Rotisserie baseball season begins with a player draft (sometimes done as an auction), with each team in the league selecting 23–27 players (with set quotas at each position) from major league rosters. The statistics that these players accumulate over the course of a season determine the winner of the rotisserie league. The statistics typically used in this game are batting average, home runs, runs scored, runs batted in, wins (pitching), saves, earned run average, and walks plus hits per innings pitched. As the season progresses, team managers can drop underperforming or injured players and acquire new ones.

What is now popularly called fantasy baseball developed from the rotisserie game and takes advantage of the capabilities of the Internet to share data with a dispersed group of people. Online fantasy baseball provides statistical management for small rotisserie leagues and also offers large-scale leagues in which multiple teams may own the same player.

The popularity of fantasy baseball spawned a new industry of statistical services and publications that analyzed players from a fantasy perspective and offered team management strategies. By the late 1980s, American gridiron football also had a fantasy version, and by the turn of the 21st century, nearly all team sports and many individual games had fantasy equivalents, most of which were played on the Internet. Fantasy games are now a global pastime—wherever Internet access is available.